itch.io

Make shorter games. Aim at action density somewhat comparable to what is found in film and animation.

The cut is underused in games. "Cut to play" describes the process of hinting gameplay through switching viewpoints. It also encourages designers to leverage the cut in other ways. For example "cut to continuity" may be used to contract tedious segments (such as a walking across the same area for the umpteenth time).

In software, personas are used to ensure various types of users can enjoy the same software product. Likewise we aim at building game appeal around a story and theme, and use personas to design adaptive, inclusive experiences.

Game actions are not enough. Emotional, expressive characters are wanted.
If our characters do not shed tears, our players will not be moved.

Time does not wait: the game over, save points and burning villages patiently awaiting dousing have no place in diegetic games.
Seek the moment. Games imply repetition, but then again, so does life. Repetition is also a mechanic in music and poetry (ask the Iliad, and the Odyssey); therefore we hope to design consequential games without killing the fun.

Pick functional realism over visual realism. If it quacks like a duck, lays eggs, and I can make omelet, it has to be a duck, right? This thread explores a simulationist foundation to diegetic design.

As much as we'd like to think entering an Isekai (otherworld) would be fun, narration essentially prunes the world experience, turning the tedium of time and space into excitement.

In diegetic games, world building is essential. This is because the player's freedom goes beyond (debatably how far beyond?) the bounds of a linear or even multilinear story.

Thanks for playing <3 ~ (tip: the axe!)

Just a thing; nowadays macOS does not support x86. The x64 version should be the main (and probably the only) version

(in case anybody wonders; itch asks me to put a password here; so I don't mind you go and erm, check out a quick blurb and a picture : )

Hi Mike. Here's a link to my late sub https://eelstork.itch.io/carpenter-2 - this needs the password Supervisor as there is currently no exe attached. Will be able to lift this restriction tomorrow when i put something up, but final sub probably only within 7!

Well done! Hoping to play this tomorrow!

Good game! Nice mechanics

Just a Q what engine was this made in?

Wow I had to leave the customizations behind because our VIP skins were created before the Jam. Probably going to branch the project so I can add features without disturbing the jam submission.

Heard from fellow jammers at LD44 that bug fixes are allowed post-submission. I pushed a patch today and, if I find any more bugs, I'll post here. Also do report bugs if you find any. Thank you!

• Fixed avatar jitter - found that the rotor had several issues that contributed to this. Going to ditch this rotor later because it's been repurposed and isn't the tool for the job. Still, not seeing much jitter at all.
• Nudge was granting HP with negative values. Fixed = v =

Sure! They're good ideas! Well actually I could add maps, but it was really hard to throw this in with the jam. As to having a start screen... : D

What you mean customization?

And thanks for all the help testing this one really needed some!

So I'm getting close to the LD44 submission. Hoping that this would help me find my way around last minute improvements, here's a list of what I'm thinking of fixing:

1. atm although a last man standing game there is no display of remaining players count. Also being a 1 room game there should be a display of ghosts (already pk'd) and spectators (joined after match start) [DONE]
2. For now we set the min player count to 2. I'd like to push this to 3-5 but then this compels me to add an option to manually start matches [DEFERRED]
3. The camera is debatable. Thinking of switching to a more classic 3rd person camera (with commands to rotate and adjust distance ooh) as I'm expecting some erm, backlash over the current system [DID SWITCH TO A NEW CAMERA WITH TEXT BASED CONTROLS]
4. Add a banner to make it super-clear when late joiners are enrolled as "spectators" as I expect nobody will figure it out (currently banner at the top, but on a roll with other messages) [DONE]
5. Photon has a limit of 20 players (free plan) but this limit is not handled at all. So I guess the thing would just be unresponsive to the 21st player entering (not planning so much affluence, but mmh, who knows? [DEFERRED]
6. Any kind of sound would help a silent game here [ADDED SFX AND AMBIANCE]
7. It's possible to gain a lot of HPs in this game, so I think size should be proportional to HP [DONE]
8. I've wanted the map to be prettier [ADDED BICOLOR TENTACLES AND WEIRD MOSS]
9. Wanted to add single player content [DEFERRED]
10. Add player's name (or initials) on the side of their avatar/drone [DONE; you see 3 letter names, or 2 letters + . for longer names]

Hey! Welcome to this thread. I'm Eelstork the author of TS2. At the moment here's a few things I'm planning to be working on:

• Apply rotation to the turtle shell
• Control the turtle's head and beak
• Add turtle soccer challenge (2p VS same comp)
• Add turtle sumo challenge (2p VS same comp)
• Add turtle tank escape challenge (1p story mode)

Sounds awesome ha! Don't hesitate to post your suggestions; note that you can support my work on Patreon, or check out my other games - making this stuff actually takes a huge amount of time. Thank you!

Post your results here for stage 2

Post your results here for stage 1.

Totally! Short term goals work well for some and I'm in the same boat so I switched my approach to releasing my game chapter by chapter. Keeps me on track!

Currently, and possibly for a short time, my day job. 

My first complete game (Antistar: Rising) found a little success on mobile (9 years ago, almost); thought I could make it, didn't turn out so good. Spent quite a few years licking my wounds; freelance gigs then a long string of... game unrelated coding gigs. Money was good, taught me lots, but passion is a thing and having the tiniest slivers of time to work on what I love isn't ideal so I decided to give it another try.

Some lessons I learned:

• Go for the long haul. Indie game dev is often done on small but indefinitely extensible "budgets". 3 years of thrashing and trying to kick stuff out of the door is silly (done it). 3 years of regular, focused part time work can put a lot of value in a game (getting there).
• Anything goes west, cut it short. I call this the "rabbit hole syndrome" where basically something (game feature, modeling work, design issue, third party software annoyance) starts taking a lot more time than expected. It's okay to do research or take up challenges, but heavy stuff should be done outside game project work.
• Stick to games I enjoy making. Although I might come up with 50 game designs in a week, most of these are stuff that I'm not going to stick to anyway so I just tune down on that. A so called "game idea" might fit a lot better as a small game feature in a serious project.

I'm currently remaking my very first game (in preparation of a sequel, and with a much wider range of target platforms) which may sound a little boring but, I get attached to my projects... doing stuff over again makes it a lot easier to learn and improve : )

I think the best fun with this game will be the multiplayer so bring your friends!

Hey this is apparently working. So I can collect resources and use them as bullets right? And shots ricochet on icebergs!? Not bad! Not bad at all!!!

I see. It's kind of weird, in my browser (Safari) I only gain focus after I expand the window, so that's why space wasn't working - scrolled me to the bottom of the page instead.

Didn't notice that with other web games, not sure...

Just a quick heads up to explain why I have to set a price for A Birdman Emulator, which I previously made free to share with fellow jammers. Right now I'm having a sale on the Apple App Store. It would make little sense to have a $1 sale while the same game is free on the desktop. 

I have to say, the voting period for FFS jam is really long. So I got this seasonal thing coming up and, well, sooner or later I had to align prices to be fair to everybody.

Since I'm having a promo on mobile you can still get the Birdman Emulator half price on itch, or bundled with re:Antistar at a mystifying $2.14. Not really here to advertise though, not plugging a link.

Big thanks to everybody who played the game so far, and the 4 horsemen who went out of their apocalyptical ways to rate my jam entry.

Thanks for your attention!

Ah... okay. Believe it or not I actually clicked through the sequence of images thinking it was the game. To my credit, hardly got any sleep last night.

First to comment! I feel so cool.

Enjoying the look and feel but... how do I jump!?

Both your OS and Safari are out of date compared to mine.

The following would work in my opinion - and what I have in mind is that devs who are going to use Butler are not afraid of Terminal. So why use Safari in the first place?

• Provide a cut-and-paste command that would download (and if possible install) Butler.
• Provide a homebrew installer (I'm fixing a brew install for something right now so I might be able to help after I'm done and get a bit more familiar with this.

Great title! Almost overlooked this... ...hidden game. I think this is up to an interesting start!

So, is it going to be a shower of comments!? Great avatar by the way : )

As a VN it doesn't fall into the trap of wandering around the point... well, not much at any rate. So, I enjoyed it so far and may play again.

Color scheme is good and drawings are expressive; I don't mind the graphics style but still think it needs a bit of work ideally. Keep in mind that once you lock yourself into such a genre, content is everything! 

Thanks Vimino. If Birdman ever gets interest much, I might do a sequel. Would he fly? Maybe... It is somewhat of a tragi-comedy however so, your sadness is fitting!

Overall this is quite fun to play although it took me a little while to figure the tiny UI buttons. I'm thinking of playing a little more which is the sign of something engaging. But I wonder, is there only one setting to explore/interact with?

A couple of problems I encountered (macOS)

• No sound, that's kind of sad.
• Refuses to quit, had to force-quite the app

In my opinion, the introductory talk is too long. I would have had more fun if I could interact much sooner.

Promising!

I have this ongoing soul searching about hidden gems, like do they exist and all. This is looking very polished, however.

https://mecham.itch.io/spotter

The most amazing aspect is it has several views on-screen, so you can keep track of the mothership situation. And yes, the graphics rock.